London

I want: to be more organised | a new career | a better sex life | to be green | a life coach

Learn origami

I want… a new hobby

Be a better cook
A beginner's guide to the culinary basics

Forget TV chefs, go online
Recipes by Tana Ramsay, meringue à la Dyson… what has TV cookery come to? Producers’ obsession with celebrity, gimmickry and fast-paced editing have made telly just about the worst place for beginners and improvers to learn anything. But don’t hang up your apron just yet; there are websites that explain cooking techniques and ingredients in-depth at a sensible pace that today’s television executives would deem ‘boring’. Head to the BBC’s superb ‘Get Cooking’ site (www.bbc.co.uk/food/get_cooking).

Buy good ingredients
It’s a culinary cliché, but it’s true: if you buy dreary ingredients, you have to work hard to make them taste good; if you buy great ingredients, you can do the bare minimum. Take a pavé rump steak from grass-fed beef, fry it for a couple of minutes each side, let it rest – Michelin stars. Take cheap supermarket braising steak, fry for a couple of minutes each side, serve immediately – Michelin tyres. Feature continues

Follow the recipe and pay attention
If a professional recipe writer is telling you to do something, it’s usually for your own good. This is particularly true for baking and desserts, where results are based on chemical reactions and the incorporation of air, rather than simply the application of heat, but it applies to fairly simple tasks too. Let’s say you’re toasting pine nuts: the recipe says to stir them constantly and transfer them to a bowl as soon as they’re done. That’s because you want the pine nuts to brown evenly and if they’re left in the pan, they’ll continue cooking in the residual heat even if you turn the stove off. Instead you leave them in the pan while you take that call from your mother. Then you have to open a window, bin the burned pine nuts and find some more…

Take a class, or four
If you’re a beginner or serious about improving, don’t bother with demonstration classes; yes, they are often cheaper, but you’ll come away with little more than inspiration. Instead go for hands-on classes with spacious, well-equipped facilities, and look for those with a high teacher-to-student ratio. We recommend Rosalind Rathouse’s Cookery School at Little Portland Street (www.cookeryschool.co.uk) and Leith’s Beginners Cookery Skills evening classes (www.leiths.com).


Collect stamps
With artists such as Steve McQueen and Jimmy Cauty designing anti-war stamps, this deceptively tame hobby has rarely seemed so controversial. Begin with a small collection and soon you will be a master philatelist. Get started with www.stamphelp.com, a great site for beginners with advice on displaying and valuing your collection. Indulge in retail therapy at Stanley Gibbons, where you can also register your stamps online. Finally, if you’re really serious, you can work towards joining The Royal Philatelic Society London. Established in 1860, it is the oldest philatelic society in the world.
Stanley Gibbons, 399 The Strand, WC2 (020 7836 8444/ www.stanleygibbons.com)
The Royal Philatelic Society London, 41 Devonshire Place, W1 (020 7486 1044/ www.rpsl.org.uk)

Write a novel
Arvon Foundation's Stephen May on how to produce your first masterpiece

Write every day
Even if just for five minutes, write every day. A page a day is a novel in a year. A thousand words a day is two novels the length of ‘War and Peace’. In other words: don’t get it right, get it written. Remember what Picasso said: ‘Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.’ Remember Hemingway, too: ‘First drafts are shit.’ They are, however, necessary shit.

Find a reader
Find a constructive – but candid – reader for your book. Someone whose taste you trust who isn’t related to you, who will tell you the truth. Try to avoid punching them when they deliver bad news.

Be a ruthless editor
When you start editing, be ruthless, particularly when it comes to the bits you like the most. Slash and burn. Cutting may be the most creative bit of the whole novel-writing process.

Write what you don’t know
Making stuff up is a major part of a fiction writer’s job.

Attend an Arvon course
They really work. A week spent working with other writers without worrying about irrelevancies such as children, spouses, work or the internet will push you on faster and further than you ever thought possible.

Stephen May is the centre director at the Ted Hughes Arvon Centre at Lumb Bank, West Yorkshire (see www.arvonfoundation.org for details of residential courses). May’s first novel, ‘Tag’, will be published by Cinnamon Press in October. He is also the author of the new edition of ‘Teach Yourself Creative Writing’ (Hodder & Stoughton).


Learn to sing
Fiona McAuslan tests out her vocal chords

As a bathroom jazz queen I’ve always thought a bit of training would add some shine to my Billie Holiday warbles. Helen Astrid’s one-to-one singing sessions in her Acton home provide a perfect environment to practise away from general earshot. We kick off the session with an exercise called ‘Blowing the Trumpet’, which involves blowing tonal noises through pursed lips to see how far above my perceived octave range I can reach. ‘Most people think they have a small range, but are actually quite surprised by what they can do,’ says Astrid. It’s all about getting the body used to expanding, she says, before making me blow out my stomach like a whale to take in breath.

A few more exercises and we’ve established that I’m a mezzo, so have a middling range. We run through one of my favourite songs, ‘Summertime’, but then things start to fall apart. Ploughing on regardless, I realise that the appalling droning noise in the room is actually me. And I become very self-conscious.

That’s quite common, according to Astrid. Some first-timers are so afraid of letting go that they won’t even sing when home alone for fear of offending the neighbours. When she tells me that many people don’t start to loosen up until their second lesson, my mood improves.

To build towards my aspiration of serenading the cat, my next move will be to join Helen’s weekly group, the Sing Anything Club (www.singanything.com). Newcomers are welcomed in by a singing buddy and everyone takes part in group songs with a solo slot halfway through for anyone feeling up for it. Tailor-made for non-professional singers (accountants are particularly good, apparently) it’s an unpretentious way to take the first step. Ronnie Scott’s here I come.
Helen Astrid Singing Academy (07710 245 904/ www.thehelenastridsingingacademy.com) First one-to-one lesson £100, £85 thereafter.


Learn origami
Get technical and creative with the ancient art of paper folding, which can conjure up anything from a hungry bat to a Jedi knight. The British Origami Society (www.britishorigami.info) has practical tips, contacts for supplies, and more than 700 members worldwide.
Annual membership £24.


Craft your own couture
Kate Hutchinson makes her own burlesque outfit

What’s a twirler to do when she can’t find the perfect pair of nipple tassels? The trimming’s the wrong colour, they look like Smarties lost on a Victoria sponge and they cost £45. Answer: make your own.

We enlist the nimble fingers of burlesque fashion designer Ruby Rouge. Her intimately set five-hour workshop, all swing jazz, tea and biscuits, is an excellent couture crash course and a lesson in not only tassels, but extravagant ‘bird’s nest’ fascinators, too.

At her Hackney studio a posse of wannabe burlesque princesses fawns over kaleidoscopic silks, velvets, beading and lace, sequinned birds and butterflies, and fusses over which materials will suit which starlet outfit.

We work as Ruby reveals insider tips such as where to find bargain haberdashers. Ruby’s assistant, Kittie Klaw (Ministry of Burlesque), relays her tassling advice: ‘The more jiggly you are, the more twirl you get.’ Ten nipple tassles, some double-sided sticky tape and five bras removed later and we’re stood in a circle watching Kittie shake her thing. We desperately try to get our left ones swinging in the same direction as the right. Kittie effortlessly shimmies from side to side, her handmade pearl-encrusted creations stuck fast, but we’re wobbling like jelly trying to balance an ice-cream floater. Definitely one to practise at home.
The next ‘Craft Your Own Couture’ workshop will be at What Katie Did (www.whatkatiedid.com) on Feb 17.


Learn an instrument
The inside track on adding strange strings to your bow

Uilleann pipes
A kind of proto-bagpipes, these customisable tubular clusters are ideal for the ‘Scrapheap Challenge’ aficionado. It’s one of the more sociable instruments – the best way to pick up the basics is to join a local ceilidh band playing penny whistle, before graduating to the full uilleann pipe set later on. See www.pipers.ie for some tutorial videos and a guide to buying your perfect pipes.

Ukulele
The ukulele is London’s fastest-growing instrument (in terms of number of users – it’s not like all the ukuleles are budding into normal-sized guitars). If you’d like to be part of ukemania, head to popular East End uke epicentre The Duke of Uke. Not only will you be able to find your perfect pygmy guitar, you can also take part in the weekly workshops to sharpen your ukuleleing skillz for free.

Bouzouki
Perhaps you’d like to learn a sophisticated ethnomusicological instrument, while at the same time retaining street cred. In that case, you want to take up the bouzouki. This mandolin-style instrument is the mainstay of rebetika, the Greek equivalent of gangsta rap.
School of Greek Bouzouki (020 8206 0004/www.st-panteleimon.org).

Didgeridoo
You might think that learning to play the didgeridoo is easy, but… well, it is. You basically just do an impression of someone playing a didgeridoo down an actual didgeridoo and the rest takes care of itself.
£20 per hour, Aboriginal Arts, Stratford (www.aboriginalarts.co.uk).

I want: to be more organised | a new career | a better sex life | to be green | a life coach